OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly been exploring ways to take his rivalry with Elon Musk beyond Silicon Valley and into space. According to The Wall Street Journal, Altman recently examined buying or partnering with a rocket startup as a potential counterweight to Musk’s SpaceX, which sits inside the Tesla $TSLA ( ▼ 0.2% ) orbit both literally and figuratively.
Altman’s interest appears tied to a bigger strategic push. Both he and Musk run AI companies that are racing to secure massive amounts of compute power, and each has floated the idea of building data centers in space to solve long-term capacity issues. Altman even held talks with rocket maker Stoke Space about taking a controlling stake through an equity investment, although those discussions have since fizzled.
The feud between the two executives has bounced across lawsuits, interviews, and social platforms for years, but this is the first sign it could spill into orbital infrastructure. Whether Altman was seriously planning an aerospace rival or simply shopping for bragging rights, one thing is clear. The AI race might be heading off-planet.